Los Angeles Dodgers manager Don Mattingly acknowledged the team has some concerns about Yasiel Puig‘s conditioning. Mattingly said Puig showed up at camp weighing 251 pounds, 26 more than he weighed at the end of the regular season.

Mattingly said he didn’t think it’d be a problem, but oof, even if you are a big exciting star, you can’t show up to camp fat.

Can’t wait until Plaschke’s column tomorrow: “Too much fast driving. Too much fast food. Maybe the Dodgers were too fast to make Yasiel Puig the face of the franchise.”

I personally think guaranteed contracts are a bit ridiculous. Yeah, a lot of football players show up out of shape. But in football, guys like A-Rod or Pujols would have had to renegotiate their contracts by now or face being cut. I think that would benefit a lot of teams. That said, teams might get even more reckless with contracts if they knew they could get out of it so easily.

Alex K - Feb 22, 2014 at 7:43 AM

I think non-guaranteed are super ridiculous. They significantly shift the risk away from the team and place it on the player. Why should the team get to just absolve themselves of bad decisions?

churchoftheperpetuallyoutraged - Feb 22, 2014 at 8:54 AM

I think that would benefit a lot of teams.

Yes in that players get significantly less money than they should get. As soon as a team feels the player is overpaid, they get cut. So the player is either playing at his pay grade or below to stay on the team.

Also, non-guaranteed contracts mean players are constantly fighting for more money, knowing they can be cut at almost any time. This means we, as fans, constantly have to hear about trade demands and/or holdouts in camp because the player wants more money. Do we want to include that in baseball too?

I think it makes a difference though. Trout did the exact same thing last season. It affected his speed a little. His steals were down as a result. Over the course of the season he lost the weight, which I believe was the reason he added it in the first place..to stay stronger. There is a fine line they are trying to walk. I imagine 10lbs is about right, so hopefully he will lose about 15 before the season starts. Athletes like him can shed weight in a hurry

Lol, it’s more than 10% of his total body weight. Health care professionals across the country think you’re wrong.

That being said, he’ll be fine by the time Spring Training wraps up I am guessing.

BUT it doesn’t speak well for his work ethic to ome in out of shape. To me that is like coming to work at 9 AM and then proceeding to shower, shave, bursh your teeth etc.. only to be ready around 1130 am lol.

RE: Trout comparison it’s off-base. Trout was really, really illl the previous season in spring training and had lost significant weight. Last season he started it off at his typical weight.

Was this young man not 22 going on 23 last season? He’s 23 now? Well, unless I’ve been gravely mislead by the internet, and The Good Lord knows I have been in the past, he’s still growing. Men, on average, grow in stature until they are in their middle twenties so a big weight gain might be in accordance with his stature

Puig may have gained weight, but is he fat relative to his size? That’s really the issue here

“COME ON MAN” Does that ring a bell? The Dodgers have plenty of other stories to cover, Right? Let’s just say 26 pounds for Puig is nothing, except something to talk about. Maybe some good journalistic research could determine what his weight to over throwing ratio is? or maybe his weight to strike out ratio is? or maybe they could tie it into panda’s weight loss? hell I bet they could even state it is his attempt to slow down the game ….(209) DODGER FAN

If you are quoting that absurd segment from ESPN, you should be perma-banned instantly.

And btw, a big factor in people not thinking Puig was going to be worth his contract was his weight. He showed up to spring training last year a lot slimmer than when the Dodgers signed him. Putting all that weight back on is not a good thing.

He looks like a professional athlete there, not at all fat, either. A big strong kid who probably filled out his already impressive frame a bit more. Unless someone reputable cites Puig’s body fat content at greater than 15% I’m not getting all worked up about this

Puig is the most immature player in the MLB. He lets his emotions get the best of him at the plate and ends up swinging at pitches no one else would swing at. He makes horrible decisions defensively. He makes horrible decisions on the base paths. And now this, gaining a bunch of weight during the off season when he should be training. Maybe he just isn’t very intelligent…

You don’t see other guys doing that because most his age are still in AA ball. He is considerably better than they are and at a similar maturity level. He was also a remarkably poor Cuban who is now suddenly a millionaire in the United States so I don’t think you can really relate to him, his intelligence, mindset in the slightest.

He’s 23. Being paid millions. To play a game. It’s no damn shock that he (or most athletes for that matter) is immature, but give the dude some years. He spent barely any time in the majors, and not that much more time in the US, and yet people are pretty quick to jump all over this kid

I probably shouldn’t say it’s “character issues”. But many of the Cuban players don’t adjust to life in the US very well.

churchoftheperpetuallyoutraged - Feb 21, 2014 at 7:27 PM

But many of the Cuban players don’t adjust to life in the US very well.

Yes, if we change Cuban to “players who have to break the law to escape a repressive society, who may never see their family members again, and know that by breaking the law their family members may face retribution while said player goes to a country where he doesn’t speak the language and is expected to conform to a society they are not familiar with”, I’d understand why they may have difficulty adjusting.

How would we know about these “character issues” while they’re in cuba? And also, a ton of cuban players come here young and are thrust into a completely different culture with different norms, languages, idioms, expectations… There’s a lot of st uff going on on top of the whole “being paid millions and being on national TV” thing

I thought it was funny that Guerrero said he had never even heard of the Dodgers before he got to the US. I knew it was tough to get information there, but he said all he had ever seen of the MLB was a clip on a pirated DVD.

recoveringcubsfan - Feb 21, 2014 at 8:00 PM

Look, I am not a Puig fan – I saw him play some last year and he really acts like an ass at all times on the field, not just when he’s batting or running the bases or trying to throw somebody out at first in a hopeless display of stupidity-masquerading-as-bravado.

But really: Trout packs on weight, Harper packs on weight, and everyone says it’s to “combat the wear and tear over the course of the long season.” A black guy (from a foreign country, no less!) gains weight and he’s “lazy” or “out of shape.” Either show a picture of him in his fat pants or else this is just a bunch of BS that somebody thought would grab eyeballs and they never stopped to think about the double standard implied in the “Harper, ‘big as a house’ = good idea, kid!” articles vs. this kind.

I hope we can all just move on and address the real issue: Commenters who refuse to let anyone say anything bad about Puig’s on-field behavior. Puig doesn’t play for my favorite team, but it’s still all right for me to think he’s a jerk.

For his own sake, this guy better start respecting and learning the finer points of the game, and soon. The whole “bundle of talent and energy with zero baseball or social IQ” act is not cute anymore, time to grow up.

“Can’t wait until Plaschke’s column tomorrow: “Too much fast driving. Too much fast food. Maybe the Dodgers were too fast to make Yasiel Puig the face of the franchise.””

Gee, how professional of a writer to call out another one.

And yeah, the Dodgers would be the first team to put a young player on a pedestal way before they were ready to handle it *rolling eyes*

Too bad Bill Plaschke on Around the Horn and has a national following, and if he isn’t in the Hall of Fame as a sports journalist yet he will be. He actually took the time to respond to an email I wrote him; one can only imagine how much he gets in a given day.